Hello from Dorset, England

Hello
First can I say thanks all for providing a gold mine of information, I decided to register here after repeatedly finding the forums threads as a result of internet searches.

Well my film history. Apart from film compacts the first time I shot a film SLR was when I did my work experience at the Chronicle and Echo newspaper in Northampton back at the end of the 80's. I really wanted to become a pro photographer and loved printing in their lab. At the time newspapers were going to freelancers, the guys seemed worried and my careers advice was to do a technical profession with a somewhat more guaranteed income. As I was very good at science I went to university and studied Physics which eventually led to a career specialisation as a Systems Engineer. I completely lost touch with photography until 2004 when I had a big wedding to attend and holiday in southern France and northern Spain so I spent way to much money on what was at the time the top of the range Fuji superzoom. Until a few weeks ago I was completely digital but was frequently never that happy with how the images looked or the amount of time I often spent doing digital development in ACR, maybe I didn't get proficient in it. Funnily enough it was the beautiful colour tonality of Porta and Fuji 160 images on the net that has brought me back to film rather than a huge desire for B&W even though I love that too. That and falling in love with the Leica M system, or rather rangefinders in general allied to the feeling that I had been wasting a lot of money on digital upgrades and gimmick technology of no interest on this journey.

I shot my first 4 films in over 20 years over Christmas, took them into Snaps Photographic Services over in Bournemouth and have been hugely happy with the results. I am hybrid only at the moment and the experience of only feeling the need to do some minor tweaking of their scans has been everything I had hoped for, I have 4 shots I want to see printed at 16" so will be heading back over there tomorrow or Saturday morning. Very excited to see the results.

Thanks for having me.
Neil

Neil, Welcome to APUG. Were you printing bw or color at 80s. Leica is the best for either of it. But there is more options cheaper and even higher quality. Large format! There is a large format forum at the web and just find it and look to the images. And there is alternative processes section at APUG and there. You shot less , think more when calculating the exposure and development and printing variables before shutter.
And there are excellent folders , more selection of films , easy to carry , no thinking about loss or damage of the camera. Look for zeiss ikon folders. They are around 20 dollars to 300 dollars range and even the cheapest is wonderful.
There was a guy who went to abroad and forget to remove his Leica cap and loses all the images.

Neil, it's good to have you aboard. We'll have you back up and running in no time.

Hi Neil,

Welcome to APUG! I'm sure that after being here a while you'll go from colour films to black and white to setting up your darkroom to moving to medium format to thinking that large format might be a good idea to....well, you get the picture.

Welcome. I too am back to analog photo after retiring from technology. I

mooseontheloose said:

Hi Neil,

Welcome to APUG! I'm sure that after being here a while you'll go from colour films to black and white to setting up your darkroom to moving to medium format to thinking that large format might be a good idea to....well, you get the picture.

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You better believe it! This has been my experience since I joined APUG!

Welcome aboard Neil.

Hello Neil and a warm welcome to APUG!

Jeff

Welcome to APUG, Neil.

Welcome to the most knowledgeable and civilised group of photographers on the net (counting myself out, particularly wrt knowledgeability). I followed much the same route as you, except my return to analogue was B+W rather than colour neg. However, at the moment I shoot a merry mix of B/W, slides and CNeg film. There is much to be re-learnt, and many things you will learn for the first time. Hope the journey is an enjoyable one for you!

Welcome Neil.

I like Weymouth and have been there on holiday a few times. I might even go again this year.


Steve.

Hello Neil and welcome to APUG

Thanks guys. Two of the shots I want to get big prints from are B&W (XP2 at 200 ISO). I think you're all spot on about the draw of larger formats, I am not really a fan of grain but utterly love the fantastic tonality of film which only seems to get better the bigger the format.

I was close actually to buying a Mamiya 6 or 7 instead of the M6 I got, I was a little worried having never shot roll film and having no familiarity with those cameras. Of course having used an M8 for about 9 months and having some lenses made the transition a bit easier.

Someone asked about darkroom experience, I only did B&W. From what I can recall the newspaper was all Ilford B&W on site, colour only seemed to be done on transparency film but I can't for the life of me recall where they had it done. I was only there for a couple of weeks so it was a very limited but hugely memorable experience. If we had the space I would love to set up my own darkroom. Funny thing is I never remembered the prints looking as grainy as a lot of the stuff I see on the net unless the film was pushed.

Never left the lens cap on but did once forget to check if the film leader had engaged and wasted a roll, I think everyone has done that one once.

Hello and welcome to APUGland from Bridport. XP2 is one of my favourite films BTW.

NJH said:

Funny thing is I never remembered the prints looking as grainy as a lot of the stuff I see on the net unless the film was pushed.

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Darkroom prints are usually much less grainy than scans from the same negative, especially when printed with a diffuser enlarger. I can only speculate, but I think it is because enlargement shows grain (and other detail) exactly the way it is, while scanning converts real-world spheres and irregular shapes into ugly squares. In terms of fine details and tonality, darkroom prints have a distinct edge, in my view.

NJH said:

Never left the lens cap on but did once forget to check if the film leader had engaged and wasted a roll, I think everyone has done that one once.

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Once a year, more likely.

NJH said:

I think you're all spot on about the draw of larger formats, I am not really a fan of grain but utterly love the fantastic tonality of film which only seems to get better the bigger the format.

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I am betting you'll end up at 8x10 or beyond .